Friday, December 21, 2007

Kaden's Big Adventure....or....Nonna's Big Nightmare?

Day one of our adventure to Maui

Kaden's first plane ride

For those of you who don't know it, our whole family is spending Christmas in Maui this year for my parent's 50th anniversary. That includes my daughters, Kelsey and Kaitlyn, my step-daughter Julia, and grandson Kaden, (and of course my husband Chris!).

We left snowy Rochester, MN, in the afternoon on 12/19. Chris flew to Dallas to rendezvous with Julia and Kaden, the girls, and I checked into our hotel in MSP, and frolicked in the pool after eating dinner at one of our favorite places in the cities - Cossetta's!

I had a terrible time sleeping - anxiety I guess - so my day started at 4:50am when I decided it was futile to lay there trying to sleep. Once we all got up and packed, Kelsey realized she had forgotten her drivers license! We all had a small panic attack. She didn't know where it was, but it's likely in Rochester still! Plan B was that Kaitlyn and I would fly on with Kaden and she would have to meet up with us the next day. Fortunately, the TSA isn't all that observant and I guess they just assumed all three of them were my kids. They never once asked for ID from Kelsey.

So - onto the plane we went. Kaden slept most of the way on Tanta Nina (that's Kaitlyn). Here's pretty much how it looked from my vantage point in the window seat:

We arrived in Seattle at 11am (pacific time). Our flight was scheduled to leave for Maui at 3pm. We weren't thrilled about a 4 hour layover, but being the troopers that my kids are I knew we'd be ok...that was, of course, until they announced a 2 hour delay. UGH! It was a LOOOOOONG six hours in the airport, and the terminal we were at didn't have much going on!

But - that didn't stop Kaden from making a friend:

We didn't find out his little friends name, but we did find out that although he looked about Kaden's size (we thought maybe he was two), he was actually 3 years old and had only been one pound when he was born. He is Alaskan, was traveling with his mother to St. Louis.

We finally boarded out flight, and took off for Maui. Unfortunately, Kaden had fallen asleep about 1/2 hour before we boarded the flight, so once we got on - he woke up and was not very happy. He tossed around on our laps for about 2 hours. Fortunately, he did finally sleep - and then we did too! What a LONG day and a tiring trip. By the time we finally got to our condo, it was 2am Minnesota time. I don't think I've slept so hard in a very long time...

Come back for my next blog - Chris and the girls got up at 2:30 am to go on a sunrise bike tour down the volcano Haleakala. They have just arrived home and I will post about their experiences and mine today.